Saturday, March 26, 2011

So tonight is Earth Hour. its a widely publicized event thats been gaining popularity over the past few years. At first, I loved the idea of this: turning everyones lights off for an hour and enjoying an hour of a much darker sky, maybe even some more stars! Its like that episode of Hey Arnold! when arnold wanted to see halleys comet, but all the lights in the city made it too bright, so he got everyone to turn off their lights so they could see the comet. In truth though, earth hour is barely a blip. Even the most optimistic estimates of energy savings during the one hour blackout puts it at the level of stopping China's carbon output for a total of 45 seconds. Not really much at all. However, it does send a message: light pollution is changing our environment. Animals aren't able to sleep at night near lit roadways and high-density development, and some lights stay on for nobody, wasting electricity through the night. I hope people take earth hour and bring it into their own lives, turning their lights off more often then theyre not being used, and being conscious of energy usage. Together, we can make the world brighter by turning off the lights :)